What's the most heated debate in Canadian sports today? No, not fighting in hockey or whether the NFL is more entertaining than the CFL. It's MMA vs. boxing. Sun Media writers Jose Rodriguez and Murray Greig trade verbal punches and kicks -- and maybe some ground and pound -- as they argue which sport deserves the championship belt.

Jose Rodriguez has been covering mixed-martial arts for Sun Media since before it was fashionable. He has sat cageside for everything from UFC events to smokers. He was the first major print journalist in Canada to write about MMA and one of the first in North America. He currently writes a weekly column and is the chief contributor to The Scrapyard blog.

Starting with Ali-Spinks II, Murray Greig has covered Canadian and international boxing for the past 30 years and has attended 55 national, British Commonwealth and world title bouts. He trained former Canadian light heavyweight champ Danny Stonewalker for a world title challenge against Michael Moorer in 1990, and in 1996 authored the best-selling book, Goin' the Distance: Canada's boxing heritage. He currently writes a weekly boxing column in the Edmonton Sun.

Today, the two veteran fight writers answer the bell in the Great Fight Debate.

JR: It's the ultimate locker room debate. Mike Tyson and Chuck Liddell step into a ring, cage, alley, whatever. Who wins? My money's on Chuck. Plain and simple, mixed martial artists' have more weapons at their disposal while boxers only concentrate on using half their bodies. The fact a fight can end in so many ways is what makes mixed martial arts a much more exciting sport than boxing.

MG: MMA apologists always like to babble about how their top guys would beat Mike Tyson, Floyd Mayweather, Manny Pacquiao or any other elite boxer in a cage fight. So what? The 500th-ranked pro golfer would whip Oscar De La Hoya on the links and any third-rate college tennis star would mop up the court with Vitali Klitschko. Likewise, any novice taekwon-do practitioner would toss an MMA fighter out of the cage if they were adhering to the rules of taekwon-do. And a marginally talented club fighter would knock any MMA champion cold in a boxing match.

JR: Fighting is about fights. The most exciting ones these days aren't happening with the big pillowy gloves. There were more highlight reel knockouts in MMA last year than there has been in boxing over the past decade. As for the marginally-talented club boxer KOing an MMA champ, give your head a shake. MMA fighters are trained in jiu-jitsu, Muay Thai and, yes, boxing. Affliction's Andrei Arlovski had Freddie Roach -- the man who trained De La Hoya and Pacquiao -- in his corner last month.

MG: You're right on the first count: Fighting is about fights. And while I don't doubt that somewhere in the vast MMA wasteland lurks a handful of practitioners who can make a truly compelling fight, for the most part, these "tests of manhood" quickly degenerate into two sweaty guys wrapped in each other's arms and rolling around on the floor, panting for breath. The fact that MMA crowds often boo the ground game underlines my point. Because neither guy can punch -- or take a punch -- they hit the deck 30 seconds into a five-minute round, then spend the next four and half minutes like they're auditioning for the "squeal like a pig" scene in Deliverance. To me, that's a lot more boring than brutal -- not to mention the fact that there's something very wrong with any athletic endeavour that employs something called a "rear naked choke hold." If I want a fix of the kind of cartoon violence you refer to as "highlight reel knockouts", I'll pop in a DVD of the Three Stooges.

JR: It's 2009, Murray. The "human cockfighting" argument went out with John McCain. Mixed martial arts may have started as a toughman test, but it has evolved into a sanctioned sport with 31 rules, weight classes and champions as disciplined as any boxing belt holder. In many cases, more disciplined because of the amount of training that's involved. It consistently outsells boxing in pay-per-view buys and the fight cards aren't just one fight you want to see and three you could care less about. The ground game can be frustrating to some fans, but no more frustrating than watching Lennox Lewis extend his arm for 12 rounds to keep his opponent at bay. MMA is the evolution of fighting. You should pop that Three Stooges tape out of your Beta and get with the times.

MG: Where do you get this "evolved" stuff, Jose? Climb aboard the Wayback Machine and you'll see that MMA is simply a lower form of what boxing was 150 years ago, before the introduction of the Marquis de Queensberry rules. Maybe that's why your "sport" is still illegal in Ontario and New York, huh? When a guy is down and defenseless, beating the crap out of him doesn't prove anything -- least of all "toughness." When anything goes, anybody can climb into a cage and fight like a rabid rodent. On the other hand, it takes heart, brains and courage to climb through the ropes, stand upright and box. And please don't tell us about how a so-called great ground game requires fabulous athletic ability. So does the Tour de France and springboard diving. That doesn't mean they're fun to watch.

JR: If a fighter cannot "intelligently defend himself", the ref steps in to stop the fight. It happens all the time. Unlike boxing -- and real life, for that matter -- the fight isn't over once you hit the mat. Yes, if a fighter is rocked, a mixed martial artist will jump on top of him to secure the stoppage or attempt a submission. That's not much different than a boxer picking apart a swollen eye or laying on the heavy leather once his opponent is wobbling back and forth on the ropes. As for why it's not sanctioned in Ontario and New York, that'll happen soon enough. Just feel sorry for fight fans who are denied a perfectly safe, proven sport because their athletic commissions are filled with dinosaurs.

MG: The only dinosaurs are UFC president Dana White and the other poseurs who try so hard to convince us that the "worldwide phenomenon" of MMA is anything more than a jacked-up version of the latest Ghetto Fights DVD. The fact of the matter is that it's almost exclusively North American. Having spent a year writing sports in the People's Republic of China, I can tell you for a fact that in the world's most populous nation, NOBODY has heard of Brock Lesnar, Randy Couture or Georges St. Pierre -- but they know all about Ali, Tyson, Pacquiao and De La Hoya. Ditto for South America, Europe and Africa. It's only in Third World backwaters like Britain that the MMA export has caught on, albeit marginally. Boxing, on the other hand, is engrained in the history and culture of five continents.

JR: Boxing also had a one hundred year head start. If the UFC is like you say, a jacked-up version of the latest Ghetto Fights DVD, that's one awfully lucrative ghetto. Japan, Korea and Brazil are huge on MMA. Ireland just hosted a UFC and there are plans to bring one to the Philippines and Germany this year. Canada will host UFC 97 in April and Mexico -- where many of the world's great boxers were born -- will likely host one in the next 18 months. Hard to argue against it being universally popular. As for China, last time I checked, there's a statue of Bruce Lee in the Avenue of Stars in Hong Kong Harbour. Haven't seen any of boxers.

MG: Can't argue with UFC's marketing strategy in North America. That "Boxing is your grandfather's sport" tagline is brilliant. But research shows that only about 20% of hardcore MMA devotees have ever seen live boxing. More importantly, once they're exposed to it, they usually come back. The flip side is that MMA's fan base is overwhelmingly the 18-30 white male demographic -- the same group responsible for the phenomenal popularity of WWE and video games like Grand Theft Auto. Eventually, however, they stop playing with their action figures, move out of their parents' basement and get on with life. Bottom line? Decade after decade, individual boxing matches have captivated a global audience and contributed to the elevation of society and the human condition. Think of Jack Johnson vs. Tommy Burns and Jim Jefferies; Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling; the Ali-Frazier trilogy; even Foreman-Moorer. MMA has never come close to that, and never will. It will always be the sideshow on the periphery of mainstream sports -- right where it belongs.